Melpa

PRONUNCIATION: MEL-pah
ALTERNATE NAMES: Medlpa; Hageners
LOCATION: Papua New Guinea
POPULATION: 130,000
LANGUAGE: Melpa; Tok Pisin
RELIGION: Christianity; native Melpa religion

INTRODUCTION

The Melpa (also spelled Medlpa) are some of the first Papuans that tourists and visitors to the island of New Guinea see when they step off the plane in Mount Hagen. "Hageners," as the Melpa are often called, frequent the airport at Mount Hagen offering modern "stone axes," colorful string bags, and other artifacts for sale. Some of them also provide taxi and bus service to the local hotels and guesthouses. Historically, the Melpa were the first highlands group to be encountered by Europeans in 1933. Up until this time, the highlands of New Guinea had been unknown to the outside world, and, conversely, the highlanders had never before seen people who lived beyond their mountain valleys and plains. The first contact between these two groups was recorded on film and provides an invaluable and extremely interesting record of this monumental time of discovery for both groups.

LOCATION AND HOMELAND

The Melpa live in the Western Highlands Province of the independent Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea. They are highlands-dwelling people with most of the area they inhabit ranging between 1,200 and 2,000 m (4,000-6,500 ft) above sea level. The Melpa occupy the areas north and south of the important town of Mount Hagen. There are about 130,000 Melpa, with the greatest area of population density just outside Mount Hagen in the Wahgi Valley and nearby Ogelbeng Plain. The climate in the area is relatively mild, especially by tropical standards. The temperature rarely exceeds 30°c (86°f) in the summer months and rarely falls below freezing in winter. Rainfall is heaviest between October and March, with a dry period from April until September. Mosquitoes are nonexistent here and malaria is, therefore, not a problem.

LANGUAGE

The Melpa speak a Papuan language belonging to the East New Guinea Highlands stock. Melpa is closely related to the well-known Chimbu language spoken by the people of the same name located to the east of the Melpa region. Melpa has over 130,000 speakers and a portion of that population speaks Tok Pisin as a second language. Tok Pisin is one of the official languages of Papua New Guinea. Melpa is not under threat from Tok Pisin, as some other languages in the country are. It is still the case that most Melpa children grow up speaking Melpa as their first language.

FOLKLORE

Myths relating the origins of the clans were and still are told within Melpa society. Sacred objects or living beings associated with these myths and clans are called mi. Extended oratory and epic stories are performed to recount the deeds of clan heroes and ancestors. "Female Spirit"-called Amb Kor in Melpa-stories are important and widespread in Melpa oral literature.

RELIGION

Ghosts are the focal point of non-Christian religious practice among the Melpa. Pork sacrifices are made to placate the ghosts of dead family, lineage, and clan members on the occur-rence of illness within the village or prior to the undertaking of any dangerous event. The Melpa have religious experts who are responsible for curing the sick and act as intermediaries between the human world and the spirit world. Women are not allowed to be curers but can be possessed by spirits and can also foretell the future. Christianity has existed in the Melpa region ever since the founding of Mount Hagen as an administrative, trade, and missionary center after the first Leahy expedition in 1933. A number of the Melpa are now practicing Christians and attend the local churches on a regular basis.

MAJOR HOLIDAYS

The Mount Hagen Show is an important local holiday for Hageners. At the show groups from all over the highlands region attend to perform traditional songs, music, and dance adorned in ceremonial attire. Body decoration reaches it pinnacle for this event. The Mount Hagen Show takes place every two years. National holidays such as Independence Day are recognized by the Melpa who live and work in Mount Hagen. More rural Melpa do not recognize these events since they do not directly affect their daily lives.

The most important and well known ceremonial event in traditional Melpa society was the moka . The moka was an exchange process in which an individual male gave an initiatory gift to another male, who in turn gave a gift back to that individual plus something more. Exchange partnerships developed in this way continued through the adult lives of men. Before the introduction of European goods into the highlands, the major items of exchange in the moka were pigs, both living and cooked, and pearl shell necklaces. In the post-colonial period, cash, machetes, and even four-wheel drive vehicles were exchanged in increasingly competitive moka ceremonies. The goal of the exchange was to gain status and prestige in the eyes of the larger society by giving more than one received. Men who are accomplished at achieving this goal are known as "bigmen" in the community and viewed as leaders, and although the traditional moka has all but disappeared from Melpa society, "big-manship" is still important Within the moka system, true "big-men" were able to arrange large-scale, multiple moka exchanges involving many pairs of exchange partners. Anthropologists refer to this type of exchange as "redistribution." In redistributive exchange, the goal is not to accumulate goods or wealth for personal use, but instead to accumulate items to redistribute them within the community. Modern-day taxation is also classified as a type of redistribution.

RITES OF PASSAGE

In most societies in the world, a female's passage into adulthood is marked by the onset of menstruation. This event is usually recognized by the community through ceremony, seclusion, or a set of initiation/maturation rites. The Melpa people are different in that they did not socially recognize or celebrate a girl's first menstruation. Most other highland groups from Papua New Guinea have rites centered on a girl's first menstruation. The Melpa are like other groups in the area that do focus on the necessary segregation of males and females due to the fear of pollution of males by females, especially through menstrual blood.

In the past, the Melpa did have elaborate initiation rites for males, although through contact with the outside world these have been greatly modified and have all but disappeared.

INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS

In some parts of the highlands, hamlets are separated by valleys and mountain ridges. Especially in the more rural Melpa region, hamlets may be widely separated from each other. In these areas greetings are accomplished long distance via yodeling. Requests, directions, commands, and challenges are often yodeled back and forth by men across a ravine or a ridge, completely out of visual range of each other.

Inheritance is based on patrilineal principles: sons inherit from their fathers. The most important item for inheritance is land. A father's land is parceled out to his sons at the time of their marriage. His daughters may receive cultivation rights to a parcel of land after they are married.

LIVING CONDITIONS

There are two main types of traditional Melpa houses: men's and women's houses. Men's houses are round with conical roofs. This is where men and pre-teenage boys live once they have been separated from their mothers around the age of eight years old. Women and their unmarried daughters live in the rectangular-shaped women's house. There are pig stalls built inside the women's house to keep the pigs from wandering off at night or being stolen. A hamlet consists of at least a men's house and a women's house. Members of a clan resided in the same territory, which was near gardening areas and linked together by paths. Missionaries advocated the building of family homes among the Melpa where a husband, a wife, and their children would sleep together. Some Melpa have adopted this new form of residence while others have chosen not to. Roads often link hamlets together and further link these to the Highlands Highway, which bisects the Highlands Range.

FAMILY LIFE

Marriage involves the exchange of valuables by both families. The majority of the goods are given by the groom's family to the bride's family and constitute what anthropologists refer to as "bride wealth" or "bride price." Traditionally, the groom's family and kinfolk would provide a number of pigs and shells to the father of the bride in compensation for the loss of his daughter. Nowadays, cash payments are included in the calculation. The bride's family provides a number of breeding pigs that their daughter will have control over in her new family. The negotiation of a "bride price" is a significant part of the marriage transaction and can derail a potential marriage.

The Melpa trace their genealogies through the male line. Clans are created through common descent from a shared male ancestor. Individuals choose their spouses from clans outside their own. After marriage, the couple moves into the groom's father's hamlet. Later, they will build a new women's house for the bride near the groom's men's house. Divorce consists of repayment of part of the bride price, especially if the woman is seen to have been at fault.

CLOTHING

The Melpa that live or work in Mount Hagen wear Western-style clothing. Men usually wear shorts, a T-shirt, shoes if they own them, and a knitted cap, and carry a string bag. Women wear A-line dresses often made of a floral print fabric. They also carry string bags, but much larger than those of the men. Women also wear shoes if they own them, but one is much more likely to see a man with shoes than a woman. Concepts of owning a wardrobe of clothing do not exist for the vast majority of Melpa. In fact, most people own only one change of clothing. It is still possible to see Melpa dressed in traditional attire, including the traditional wig made from human hair that adult Melpa men wear on important occasions. In some cases, Melpa from rural hamlets will take a plane to another highland community traditionally dressed and carrying implements of traditional life, such as stone axes and digging sticks. The airport at Mount Hagen is truly a meeting place of the jet age and the Stone Age.

FOOD

Like other Highland cultures in Papua New Guinea, the Melpa traditional subsistence was based primarily on sweet potatoes and pork. Sweet potatoes are still an important staple, although Western-style foodstuffs have gained in importance due to their ready availability in trade stores and the central marketplace in Mt. Hagen. There is also a prestige associated with their consumption.

EDUCATION

Traditional education consisted of socializing young boys and girls to become competent members of adult Melpa society. Although this is still true today, public and parochial educational venues are also open to Hageners. In the highlands region, Western-style education has been integrated with traditional ways of life to create individuals who seem to exist in two very different worlds.

CULTURAL HERITAGE

Vocal music is especially important in Melpa society. Courtship songs are prevalent in many highland cultures in New Guinea. Men woo their mates by composing and performing songs that have double entendre lyrics. When men go to sing to women in other villages they paint and decorate themselves very elaborately.

Mt. Hagen hosts the annual Mt. Hagen Cultural Show, which has been in existence since 1961. The Mt. Hagen Cultural Show is a form of friendly competition in which performance groups from dozens and dozens of tribes from across the country perform traditional songs.

WORK

The traditional division of labor was between the sexes. Men are responsible for creating gardens and fencing them. The fences serve to keep out the pigs that graze and root in the area. Women tend the pigs, plant the staple crop of sweet potatoes and other foodstuffs such as greens and taro, and weed and harvest the garden plot. Beyond small-scale subsistence farming, coffee is the primary cash crop for Hageners.

The modern Melpa work in a variety of jobs in the town. Driving taxis and buses, porting baggage at the airport, and working in shops are only a few of the types of employment that the Hageners pursue.

Tourism is one of several areas of economic growth and development that the regional governments within the Melpa traditional homeland targeted after the 2000 national census.

SPORTS

As in other parts of Papua New Guinea, rugby is an important sport in the area around Mount Hagen. Mount Hagen is the venue for many rugby games involving Hageners and other Papuans from throughout the island.

ENTERTAINMENT AND RECREATION

Town-dwelling Melpa have access to electricity and many of them enjoy watching television. There are very few locally-produced television shows in the country and only one local television broadcast station, EMTV. Satellite television broadcasts a wide range of Australian, British, and American programs.

FOLK ART, CRAFTS, AND HOBBIES

Body decoration is the major art form in the Hagen region. The body is painted with paints produced from local dyes mixed with pig fat. Traditional materials such as feathers and shells are used to decorate elaborate headdresses. Relics of the modern world have become part of the traditional headdresses, including the labels of various products and the tops of cans. The American product Liquid Paper has also become a favorite substitute for pigmented white paint; the intensity of whiteness is cited as the reason for the switch. In the past, moka exchanges were important times for elaborate decoration to take place.

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

Revenge was the basis for many violent actions taken by the Melpa in the time before pacification. Revenge murders often pitted the male members of one clan against those of another. This mentality has not completely faded from Melpa culture. Hundreds of men dressed in full war regalia can occasionally be seen running along the Highlands Highway toward a neighboring village to exact revenge for a death or wrongdoing that took place in the past. Events like these alarm tourists and government officials and warnings are sometimes issued regarding travel in the region as a result.

Mortality rates are very high among the Melpa. The infant mortality rate is 57 deaths per 1,000; the child mortality rate is 15 deaths per 1,000; and the maternal mortality rate is 80 deaths per 1,000. The main causes of death among the Melpa are pneumonia, malaria, and typhoid. Life expectancy for the Melpa as derived from the 2000 national census are 53 years for women and 54 years for men.

GENDER ISSUES

Like many of the groups in Papua New Guinea, Hageners exhibit sexual opposition and separation. Differences between males and females are often exaggerated to the point of ambivalence, antagonism, mistrust, and even fear. Nevertheless, Melpa girls have considerable autonomy in choosing a spouse. Although a girl's family might want her to marry into a particular family, they know that forcing their daughter will only result in unhappiness for everyone. Women control the production in Melpa society, including the cultivation of gardens and the all-important pig husbandry that is the center of the Melpa exchange universe. Men must rely on their wives as producers and as such, women wield considerable political power in Melpa society.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Robbins, Joel and Wardlow, Holly, eds. The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia. Burlington: Ashgate, 2005.

Sillitoe, Paul. An Introduction to the Anthropology of Melanesia: Culture and Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Stewart, Pamela J. and Strathern, Andrew. Gender, Song, and Sensibility: Folktales and Folksongs in the Highlands of New Guinea. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2002.

Strathern, Andrew. The Rope of Moka. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971.

—by J. Williams